Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Amanda Jakubovitz Bat Mitzvah
Shabbat B’haalotcha
June 21, 2003
Complaining or K’vetching?
Two stories. The new arrival at the monastery is given the following instructions. He has come to a place pledged to silence, he may speak no more than two words every ten years. After ten years, the Abbott summons the man and asks how he is doing. The man replies: “Bed hard.”
Ten more years go by, and once more he is summoned before the Abbott and asked how he is doing. “Food bad!” is the response.
Finally, after ten more years, he responds to the Abbot’s question: “I quit!”
The Abbott replies: “I am not surprised. You have been complaining ever since you got here.”
Story two. A new immigrant who has just arrived in Israel from the Former Soviet Union is asked: “How was life in the country where you came from?” “I could not complain,” was his answer.
“And how were your living quarters there?” Again, the same answer: “I could not complain.”
“And your standard of living?” Again, “I could not complain.”
“If everything was so swell, then why did you come where?” “Ahhhh,” replied the new immigrant, “here, thank God, I can complain.”
Is complaining bad or good? That it is the subject of Amanda’s Torah portion. Numbers – Chapter 11, verse 1 – says: “The people took to complaining bitterly before God.” What is surprising is the continuation of this verse. “God heard and was incensed: a fire of God broke out against them, ravaging the outskirts of the camp.” How are we to understand this? Why should God get so angry with people who are complaining?
Friends, I want to suggest this morning that, in principle, God does not get angry at people who complain when they have good cause for doing so. In the Book of Exodus God did not get angry, even when the people’s complaint was voiced in the most strident words: “Would we had died in the land of Egypt . . . for you have brought us forth into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” No, God did not punish them for even those harsh words. On the contrary, God responded by showering them with manna from Heaven.
Nor was that the only time when the Israelites complained and received a positive response to their grievance. At Marah, the water was bitter and the people murmured against Moses, saying: “What shall we drink?” And God showed Moses a tree which, when he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet.
And later, at Rephidim, “The people thirsted for water and murmured against Moses and said ‘what is this that you brought us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?” Again, God responded to their grumbling and brought forth water from the rock.
Why in those instances does God respond with generosity and understanding but here, in this week’s Torah portion, God responds with a plague of fire?
Biblical commentator Pinchas Peli suggests that the answer can be found in the Hebrew itself, which reads: “Vayehi ha-am k’mitonenim.” While our Jewish Publication Society translation reads “the people took to complaining bitterly”; there is actually a more literal translation. It says: “The people were like complainers.” Peli takes this phrase to mean that people were not complaining about specific problems with potentially specific remedies, but merely murmuring, like complainers, grumbling simply to let off steam and foment rebellion.
Now we begin to understand why God responds so differently in this instance. Early on, the people made reasonable complaints about immediate needs and God responded with kindness; but here, where they are merely grumbling like habitual complainers, God becomes incensed, lashing out in disappointment and anger. Here, I suggest to you, the people’s behavior is an example of k’vetching.
Think about this situation in Numbers 11, Amanda’s portion. The Children of Israel have been saved from the ravages of Egyptian slavery – they’ve had the waters of the Reed Sea parted before them, they have been given manna to eat in the desert, so now what is the big problem vexing them? They are bored with the manna. They want some prime rib, or hamburger at least. If only we had meat, they complained to Moses. We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled; there is nothing at all, nothing but this manna to look forward to.
Isn’t it amazing how nostalgia makes the “good ole days” always seem better? Someone once observed, tell me what you remember and I will tell you who you are. Memory is selective indeed. These former slaves did not remember the torture and humiliation of slavery, or the joy and excitement of liberation. All they remembered was the fish they ate in Egypt. And I don’t know about fish given freely without pay. Really? From the same Egyptians who refused to give them straw to produce bricks? The slavery, the oppression, the murder of our children – they were not really so bad. Forget this freedom business; we want chicken McNuggets.
According to our Torah text, the k’vetching of the People of Israel was answered – they got exactly what they asked for. “A wind from God started up and swept quail from the sea and strewed them over the camp and the people sat together in quail all that day and night and all the next day.” Some two cubits, that is three feet deep on the ground, that is how much quail there was.
But the text continues. “While the meat was still between their teeth, not yet chewed, the anger of God blazed forth against the people and God struck the people with a very severe plaque, which had been carried, no doubt, by the precious quail.” God seemed to be saying: “Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.” Quit your k’vetching!
But is complaining always wrong? Should it always be punished? Of course not. After all, the Israelites would not have gotten very far if Moses had not brought his complaint against Pharaoh. Complaining about a problem can lead to a solution. When we complain about something, we assume there is an answer and then see what we can do or what help we can get to resolve it. This is the proverbial “squeaky wheel getting the most grease.” This kind of complaining assumes that there must be an answer out there, and we fully expect to find it.
The real enemy of improvement in our lives is not dissatisfaction and this kind of complaining; it is the apathy that says “nothing can ever change, nothing will ever get better.” The attitude that life is meaningless and that there is nothing to be done about it is tragic. Complaining means we are still fighting, we have not given up; conditions are tough but we want and expect a change for the better. And because we have not given up the struggle for a solution, a solution is exactly what we so often find.
Friends, in all of the modern self-help courses, we are told that we have to be assertive, express our feelings. So how do we tell the difference between k’vetching – grumbling, murmuring like habitual complainers; not really a justifiable complaint, and assertiveness? Or to put it this way, how can we distinguish between legitimate complaints which are a positive, valuable alternative to apathy and k’vetching, which is neither constructive nor positive?
Do you remember Sally Fields in her role as the poor southern factory worker in “Norma Ray”? Norma Ray had never so much as met a Jew till she hooked up with a Jewish intellectual union organizer from up North. Norma Ray works with this newcomer day and night in an effort to organize her factory. In the process she becomes quite taken with him. But, at one point in the movie, they have a fight, and he begins picking on all the little things she has not done right. Furious, Norma Ray turns to him and yells in her best Southern accent: “Ka-vetch, ka-vetch, ka-vetch.”
All right. This morning I humbly submit to you my k’vetchometer, five guidelines for telling the difference between assertive complaining and apathetic k’vetching.
When the Children of Israel in this week’s Torah portion were murmuring about how boring their manna was, they were k’vetching. They were not moving towards freedom, but rather away from it. They wanted to go back to slavery. Assertiveness will lead you towards freedom; k’vetching will lead you away from it.
Second, assertive complaining is a productive activity. When we complain in such a way as to help effect a positive change, we are not k’vetching. We are k’vetching when we grumble only out of our own need to be heard, and when we are not making any positive contribution to the situation.
Third. Complaining involves trying to be objective and to take the feelings of others into account. We are k’vetching when we hear none but the sound of our own hunger, our own discomfort, our own feelings. The whole world exists just for us and we are uncomfortable. That is k’vetching.
Fourth. We are k’vetching when we do not want to take responsibility for that which we are trying to change. On the other hand, we are constructively complaining if, given the opportunity, we are willing to make a positive contribution to the solution. When they invite you to join in correcting what you are complaining about and you accept, that is not k’vetching.
Finally, contrary to popular belief these days, just expressing our feelings is not necessarily being assertive. Yes, we should “get in touch with our feelings, sense our emotions”; but once they are put into words they are no longer ours alone. They have an effect on the entire community of those around us. Therefore, expressing our feelings is only assertive when it leads to some solutions and leads us to work for change and improvement. Otherwise, it is just k’vetching.
Friends, we often do not realize our own power, the extent to which our actions and our attitudes affect those around us. It has been said: we are what we eat. Actually, we are what we say. And what we say deeply affects those around us. When things are not going well and we begin to k’vetch, we contribute to the negativity more than we are a victim of it. But, conversely, when we are positive in our complaining, constructive, clearly desiring a solution to which we are willing to contribute, then we can create a better world for ourselves and for all those around us.
Let’s learn from this week’s Torah portion the difference between complaining and k’vetching; so that we may become a positive force in our family and our school, in our temple and in our community. Amen.
The work of Pinchas Peli and Rabbis Elliot Strom and Paul M. Yedwab helped focus and shape this message.
